Winifred Adebayo: Changing the Coloured World

I was at my dental appointment a few weeks ago. The dental assistant seemed like she was having the best day of her life; she was smiling every minute. She tried to start up a conversation while she set things up for my teeth cleaning. “Where are you from?” she asked with a broad smile; it’s a question I’m asked regularly. I didn’t think much of it and I replied “Nigeria” barely looking at her face; nothing prepared me for the next comment from her. She blurted with excitement “Oh! my African sister”. It was at this point she got my attention. I looked at her silk-flowing hair, blue eyes, and her ‘white’ skin; I thought she had cracked a joke and I missed it.

She spent the next few minutes with so much intensity and excitement explaining how we were sisters. It turns out, she is from Morocco and indeed we both are Africans. She added she gets stares and weird looks when she tells people she is African. But what struck me the most was how intensely she was convinced we were ‘sisters’, even when the both of us were night and day in the way we looked. Throughout my appointment, she treated me like I was a member of her family.

Maybe she gets paid to be friendly; maybe she really believed we are sisters. Either way, she left me really challenged as I pondered on the word ‘sister’. It wasn’t the title, it was the idea.

I’m really amazed when I remember that appointment, seeing that skin color is one of the biggest issues of our time. You don’t need to search far; you will see first-hand what skin-color has done to the world we live in. It’s not a western problem as many will like to believe. The light-skin vs dark-skin is a tale as old as time, present in every country. The only difference and why it’s not as detrimental for every country is that some countries have wealth and power attached to skin-color variation while others do not. The big question is: what will happen if we see ourselves as ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’?

As unreal as that idea might seem, it starts with the changes you and I can make in the way we treat people at the bus-station, at the grocery store, in the restroom, etc. It sounds really funny but we are all the same. What we see as differences between sexes and looks are barely tweaks in our chromosomes: just a tiny little segment. At the basics, we all come into this world and leave the exact way we came: with nothing. I looked up the words ‘sister’ and ‘brother’: it’s simply someone you share something in common with. Although it’s used mainly for blood relationships, the concept is the same if we chose to apply it to any other area of life.

Take a moment and look at the person beside you; you’ll at least see one thing you share in common. For me and the dental assistant, we had different skin colors, different hair textures, and so many other differences in our looks, but we are Africans, and as she put it ‘African-sister’. What stops us from having, work-sister, natural-hair-sister, running-sister, bus-station-sister, etc.?

It’s not the title; it’s the idea that you share something in common with someone else which makes you see yourself in the person and it in turn influences how you treat that person.

I look forward to a future, where our children will not suffer and fight like we are doing today. It doesn’t depend on the government or these abstract figures we have created in our mind expecting them to perform magic. Change starts with you and I. As Sidney Sheldon said, let us leave this world a better place than when we arrived.

About Winifred Adebayo

Winifred Adebayo was born is Rivers State. She is a registered nurse and working on a PhD. She loves to write; it’s her form or art, designed with self-expression, experiences, and fiction. She blogs at www.winiesworld.com

This is very true. We can be sisters without being blood related. What about that stranger that helps you out, what better term best quslifies that kind of love than sister! I have learnt something good today

The same similar situation happened at my previous work place, she had the skin complexion of an Asian, even her last name was “Malik”

The first time she met me, she asked me where I was from and I said I was Nigerian She introduced herself to me as African! Not British, or British Asian but African

Apparently her parents were from Mauritius, whose grand parents emigrated from India. She told everyone at my workplace that she was African, she said she liked being African and she always visited her family in Mauritius.

After that I change my attitude, Before I was forming black-british, after what she said ‘Omo I change am to Naija style’ as a Naija boy.

She doesn’t just have the complexion of an Asian, she IS Asian, as you’ve described in your comment. If she was to do a DNA test, it would place her right back where her ancestry comes from. She might choose to socially identify as African, which she, of course, has a right to. The way she identifies should not necessarily make you want to change yours. If you’re paying taxes in the UK, I beg you be black British. Don’t distance yourself from a place you’ve paid into no less than the white brits.

When jesus said love your neighbor as yourself. notice samiritan was not of the same tribe or religion or even race as the battered jew he helped. People always quote but never see the significance of a samiritan helping a jew like it was his own son there was a significance in specifying a good samaritan. I’m not even religious but that’s what convinced me to stay a lil in christianity even though I find had to comprehend or adhere to most of modern day translated christianity. I find christianity hard I’m a human with flesh and blood and very mad about how passages were deleted and inserted into modern day church to make women more submissive even the eve fruit thing was made up in 4th century a.d hard to trust a religion based on fabricated garbage but Jesus quotes intrigue me esp. Good samaritan one.

It begs the question who the true African is. Is Africanness by birth, social culture, length of generational stay, or negro genes? Generally speaking, we sub-Saharan Africans aka Black Africans consider ourselves to be the real Africans. The North Africans, as some East Africans are of mixed stock due to the Arab invasion. Even in Nigeria’s north to an extent. White South Africans also identify as Africans, and rightfully so in many ways. The problem with the ‘non-pure’ negro African is that they tend to identify with their ‘other’ affiliations when it suits them.

Another truth is that black Africans are hypocritical with this skin colour, hair texture business. If as the writer of the article claims ‘African sisterhood’ would have been more believable if the physical looks were similar, why then do I read such horrible tribalistic comments on BN, especially between Ibos and Yorubas? Don’t those two groups look the same? Why the hate then if it’s about identifying based on looks?

I love this paragraph from the article:

“It’s not the title; it’s the idea that you share something in common with someone else which makes you see yourself in the person and it in turn influences how you treat that person.”

while dancing to a Nigerian song at a club in the UK, i was joined by some ‘white’ looking folks who came to me and said… ‘ u from Africa, we are Africans too. We are from Mauritius….. after a brief intro. we went back to our dancing. We are all one.